69236538256563

RACHEL
It took me twenty-five minutes to get back there.
I stood in front of Miss May’s house, panting and soaked to the skin. The only dry parts of me were
the depths of my pockets where my fingers nestled around the handle of the knife and the hard edges
of the keys.
The street was empty and in front of me the slate sky was reflected in polished windowpanes that
were speckled with rain, and the black wrought iron railings separating the house from the pavement
looked sharp and forbidding.
I approached the house and looked at the names and buzzers beside the front door. None of them
read ‘May’. I peered over the wrought iron railings that enclosed a dank courtyard at least twelve feet
below ground level.
It was worth a try.
I took the steps down one at a time, slowly, stone treads slick and treacherous. The doorbell wasn’t
named. I rang it. No answer.
I got out her keys and tried the Chubb key in the deadlock. It turned smoothly. In went the Yale key
too, soft click, and I had to give the door a bit of a shove but it opened and I saw a dark hallway
ahead, daring me to step into it.
‘Hello?’ I called. It wasn’t too late to pretend I was just returning the keys, but there was no
answer.
‘Ben?’ I called. Nothing. I felt almost disabled by fear, but I forced myself to walk down the dark,
narrow corridor. Filtered daylight beckoned me from the other end.
I glanced through an open door on my left. It was a bathroom, and it was immaculate: fixtures
gleaming, expensive looking toiletries in a neat row. The door opposite showed me her bedroom. On
the bed was a suitcase, lid open, neatly packed.
At the end of the corridor I found her living space. It was large and rectangular, the full width of the
back of the house. There was a compact, neat kitchen area and small dining table at one end of it, a
sitting area at the other. The room had stripped wooden floorboards and three wide, pretty windows
with wooden shutters folded back, sills low and wide enough to sit on. The outside space it
overlooked was little more than a light well, but there were pretty furnishings and the whole effect
was of artful good taste. It was a flat I might have been envious of under different circumstances.
Standing in the centre of the room, I saw myself reflected in a mirror over the mantelpiece. I looked
white as a ghost. My hair, blackened by rain, hung in damp hanks around my face, and patches under
my eyes were as dark as storm clouds. My skin looked slack and undernourished, and the injury on
my forehead was healed, but prominent. My eyes were darting with fear and something else as well:
there was desperation in them, and a glint of wildness.
I looked completely mad.
Doubt coursed through me.
This is what a total breakdown must be, I thought. You find yourself standing somewhere you
shouldn’t be, doing something so out of character that you wonder if you’ve become somebody else
entirely. You’ve lost the plot, taken a wrong turning, jumped onto a train whose destination is total
lunacy.
I must leave, I thought. I must go home.
I would have done that, too, but as I turned to leave I noticed the door. It was in a corner, partially